Trade Intelligence provides insight, commentary and profiles on the South African Fast Moving Consumer Goods Environment and the major retail and wholesale players. We promote effective and profitable trading relationships and inspire interest in the industry.

Photo Feature Boxer Sundumbili Mandeni

Take a tour through this next generation store, providing residents and commuters with easy access to a full-service supermarket.

Real Retail: Convenience shopping at a spaza store, which stocks up from the local supermarket.

Real Pharmacy: “Muti” and prayer items for sale from a traditional healer.

Real Cities: No automatic washing machines for the lower end consumer, who makes use of a bucket and rain water to wash clothes.

Real Fashion: Students participating in a cultural event at the Durban University of Technology, showing the many colours and styles of African fashion.

Real Cities: A lady in Mayville pours her bath water onto the dump site alongside her home. Washing is hanging from a small toilet shack, which is shared by up to 30 people living in the adjacent homes.

Real Living: A young mother, selling maize for a living is contrasted by this Zimbabwean tertiary student who is trying to create a golden future for herself at the Durban University of Technology.

Real Fashion: On the right track – a young grade 12 student returns from Johannesburg to find a changed home town near Ladysmith.

Real Cities: A man prepares to drink “Ijuba” while in conversation with his friends in the township of Khumbane, Cato Crest, Durban. Rural dwellers moving to the city use this township as their first port of call because it is affordable.

Real Cities: A long and lonely walk to pension day for this elderly man in Mayville, Durban.